News from Seattle's Office of Economic Development

Students in a Seattle Central College classroom working on a Photoshop tutorial.

About forty students from Franklin and Rainier Beach High Schools had the opportunity to try their hands at different creative trades at the first-of-its-kind Media Arts Try-a-Trade event last week, hosted at Seattle Central College.

The Try-a-Trade event was the result of a partnership between Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Colleges, and four City of Seattle departments. Students in the Seattle Central College Visual Media program led the high schoolers through different activities, all aimed at giving them a crash course in what it would be like to work in various visual media industries.

“Find something you can be passionate about in a career,” Seattle Central President Sheila Edwards Lange told the students at the start of the day. “Work doesn’t have to always feel like work.”

The high schoolers, all of whom are enrolled in similar classes at their schools, broke into groups and rotated through five stations: fashion photography, photo editing, video, portrait photography, and product photography. (Some of the students put the lessons they learned about photography and lighting to good use right away—by taking selfies with their classmates.) While enjoying lunch provided by Sizzle Pie, the students then had the chance to ask questions of a panel of industry professionals and graduates of the Seattle Central program.

Students participating in a fashion photo shoot.

While the City and local schools often collaborate on workforce development efforts, this was their first time applying the “try a trade” workshop model to artistic industries. Students are often encouraged throughout their K-12 education to pursue four-year degrees after high school, but this overlooks the many thousands of high-paying trade jobs that do not require an education at a university. Listening to the panel of professionals from employers including HBO and Nordstrom Studios, students saw first-hand that people who pursue technical education can go on to have lucrative careers doing what they love.

Events like the Media Arts Try-a-Trade are part of the City’s larger effort to help prepare students for successful careers. Learn more about how you can host youth interns at your organization this summer here.

Interested in other ways to share your industry expertise with young people? Sign up to offer other career-connected learning opportunities here. You can also learn more about the City’s workforce development efforts by checking out our website or emailing us at oed@seattle.gov.

April Reyes in the 2016 Intro to Radio Journalism Workshop. Photo courtesy KUOW.

Many students walk into KUOW’s RadioActive Intro to Journalism Workshop without much knowledge of public radio, both as a career path and as a source of news. This was the case for April Reyes, a high school student in the summer 2016 cohort. By the end of the program, Reyes published a story that touched audiences and helped change her own life.

RadioActive is KUOW’s youth media program in which young people, primarily teenagers, have the chance to learn skills to work in radio journalism. KUOW has been running this paid youth workshop program for about 13 years, and have recently participated in the City of Seattle’s youth employment program by pledging to employ at least 20 youth annually.

RadioActive teaches students the “technical and storytelling skills to produce their own audio journalism,” explains Lila Kitaeff, Program Producer with RadioActive. “Beyond that, [participants learn] social emotional skills like teamwork, collaboration, leadership, and we find people gaining confidence in the workshop.”

April Reyes was a stand-out program participant for Kitaeff. During her time in the workshop, Reyes published a piece describing her experience as a homeless student who was taken in by a local family. The story was one of KUOW’s most widely-shared that year and won an Edward R. Murrow Award for best Feature Reporting—competing against adult journalists all over the region.

Beyond the story’s effect on KUOW’s audience, it also affected Reyes’s life. Reyes’s school teachers began treating her with more respect after the story was published, and she was awarded a scholarship to the school of her choice.

“RadioActive has become such a big part of my life by giving me countless opportunities,” says Reyes. “It has given me confidence. RadioActive continuously inspires me to influence others to take the opportunity to tell their stories. Everyone deserves to be heard.”

Reyes continues to be a part of RadioActive by participating in its Advanced Producer group, teaching workshops at the King County Juvenile Detention Center, and doing outreach to inspire other students to share their voices. She is currently attending school to become a social worker.

April Reyes’s experience shows the impact that a summer job can have, both for the student and for the organization. Beyond producing quality journalism for KUOW—student stories have won various awards over the years—Kitaeff stresses the other values of hosting youth interns.

Students in the summer 2016 workshop. Photo courtesy KUOW.

“We’re introducing young people to public radio…they may become listeners, they may spread that to their own communities,” says Kitaeff. KUOW is also “living its values as an organization” through its youth employment program. In sharing access to KUOW’s resources with students who are often from communities with less access to high quality arts and media, KUOW is furthering its mission to “serve the entire community.”

“You’re going to learn so much from the young people that you work with,” says Kitaeff, when asked what employers can expect when hosting youth interns. “You’re going to gain new perspectives, new ideas, and the energy that we get from working with young people is the best.”

The Seattle Center Youth Internship Program is focused on providing meaningful opportunities for youth of color in Seattle, as part of the City of Seattle’s Youth Employment Initiative. The initiative provides exposure and experience in career pathways for youth ages 16-24, and occurs during the summer. Most of the youth come from the Seattle Youth Employment Program (SYEP), one of many youth employment training programs in Seattle. Seattle Center’s internship program, under the larger Initiative’s umbrella, is seeking to create a new model for a truly transformative internship program.

Supervisor Chelsea Rodriguez (MoPop), Intern Katetrianna Quartimon

Seattle Center Chief Operating Officer Mary Wideman-Williams created the Seattle Center Youth Internship Program (SCYIP) as a pilot in 2016. Her vision was to create a program that provides exposure to career pathways in arts and culture, creates a shared experience for youth interns and maximizes the partnership of organizations across the campus. Wideman-Williams says that one of her biggest inspirations was her own background: “Growing up as a girl of color, I didn’t have a wide view of career options. I had limited exposure, which limited my thinking about what I could become.” This was one of the many reasons she championed the internship program cohort model, with a race and social justice perspective in mind.

Although Seattle Center had a long history of hiring youth interns through the Seattle Youth Employment Program, the core intentions of SCYIP fundamentally changed after the creation of the pilot. The cohort approach was integral in the success of the internship program because it created a community environment for the interns to advance their learning and create networking connections. Partnership with the Racial Equity Cohort of Seattle Center resident organizations was also key to achieving the goals of the SCYIP. This partnership provided an opportunity to harness the collective impact of more than 30 arts and cultural organizations, many of them non-profits, on the Seattle Center campus. Through this collaborative effort between Seattle Center and partner organizations, internship opportunities on the campus grew from 7 in 2015 to 27 in the pilot year, and 39 in 2017.

The program was built around three elements: job placement, career exploration and a capstone project. Job placement is the site the student gets assigned to work, coordinated through the Seattle Youth Employment Program and the C-West Program. The career exploration component in 2016 was mostly tours and behind the scenes activities around the Seattle Center campus. The students in 2016 produced a celebration event as their end-of-program capstone project.

The program design team learned a lot from the pilot year. One of their biggest priorities to improve the program was incorporating a more intentional racial equity focus. Other goals were to establish a project coordinator role and sharpen the resonance of the capstone project.
The 2017 program received a grant from the Gates Foundation to hire a program coordinator. The program was refined to include weekly meetings of the cohort to explore racial equity topics and plan a capstone event with that focus. The summer concluded with the cohort’s presentation on code switching in the workplace as the capstone event. The presentation was a hit, and showcased the capabilities of the students as well as the growth of the program.

SCYIP Capstone 2017

The success of SCYIP lies in its benefit to the interns. The program creates meaningful experiences for marginalized youth and gives students skills and confidence to bring into their future professional lives. Seattle Center is continually planning for its 2018 program, adjusting and building on its previous success to make this year the most impactful summer yet.
Not only does the program have immense value for the interns, but it is also beneficial to the organizations involved. Wideman-Williams says that the Seattle Center Youth Internship Program “helps an organization make that connection to the next generation. It’s as much about us giving a young person exposure to our world as helping us adapt to the next generation of worker. It’s a workforce equity strategy. This is not just an HR function, it’s an economic development issue.” Programs like SCYIP have value to their organizations and are a benefit to the community.

Wideman-Williams had this insight to share with organizations interested in exploring youth internships as a pathway for advancing workforce equity: “Executive level support is critical. Securing engagement of executive level sponsors in each organization to support program goals is a first step, and an ongoing requirement for success.” She also emphasizes the need for clear structural design, a race and social justice lens, program coordination and administration, as well as the value of a cohort model. “Being a youth intern in an organization of any size can sometimes feel intimidating and isolating. Providing meaningful opportunities for youth interns to engage with each other, and with coworkers, offers a richer experience. Having that engagement be intentional around a workforce equity goal or outcome is a plus.”

Sarah Scherer, Director of the Seattle Maritime Academy, gestured out of the classroom window at the Ballard Bridge over the Lake Washington Ship Canal. “How many people drive across this bridge every single day and don’t know that 80 percent of the Alaska fishing fleet is docked right there at Fisherman’s Terminal?”

She was speaking to a growing problem in one of Washington’s largest (and highest-paying) industries: many maritime industry workers are nearing retirement, and there is a shortage of labor to replace them.

The average age of the maritime workforce was over 54 years old in 2013, according to the Washington Maritime Federation. The aging workforce is presenting an issue across trade industries, and Washington’s maritime industry is no exception. This “silver tsunami” of retiring workers is troubling news for the state, as the maritime sector generates $37.8 billion in combined direct and indirect revenue annually.

This is where the Seattle Maritime Academy (SMA) comes in. SMA, a school within Seattle Central College, prepares roughly 32-36 students every year for a career in maritime, and it seeks to create pipelines into this high-paying industry for younger students as well.

Maritime students go underway for the last time after their final for a cruise around the Sound. Photo courtesy Seattle Maritime Academy.

Since maritime sector jobs are regulated by the U.S. Coast Guard, SMA gives graduates an edge in entering this growing industry. Students take a nine month, hands-on program at SMA’s newly renovated facilities, preparing them for a career in either marine engineering or marine deck technology. Students then complete a 60 or 90-day internship, depending on their program, and leave SMA with their U.S. Coast Guard certification for a position on a vessel. These positions earn $45-75 thousand annually for starting salaries, usually working for about six months out of the year.

Scherer was passionate about SMA’s potential to strengthen the region’s middle class, even describing trade education as “the answer to generational poverty.” At SMA, students can get their Coast Guard certification and be on the road to a lucrative career in less than a year.

Scherer said one factor causing the shortage of young workers is lack of awareness about the profession. Maritime jobs used to be passed along through families, but this has become significantly less common, particularly as students have encountered increasing pressure in their K-12 education to pursue higher education after high school.

Lack of awareness is doubly an issue for people of color and women, who are severely underrepresented in the northwest’s maritime industry.

“We’ve told all these kids over and over and over again, ‘You have to go to college, you have to get a bachelor’s degree to be successful,’” said Scherer. “And it’s not true. There are many jobs where people don’t need to get a bachelor’s degree just in the maritime industry, let alone all the other trades, that people can make not just a good living, but a fantastic living wage job that has upward mobility.”

This is part of what makes the Youth Maritime Collaborative so important, according to program coordinator Marsha Dickgieser. The Youth Maritime Collaborative, a collection of public and private agencies including the Port of Seattle and Seattle Goodwill, seeks to “get the wheels turning” in students’ heads about careers in maritime.

This is done through hands-on learning at special events where employers showcase the kinds of careers students could pursue, as well as through “lunch and learn” visits to local schools. The Youth Maritime Collaborative is hoping to partner with Seattle’s Office of Economic Development to connect more high school students to internships with local businesses.

“When we go do some of these high school programs, and we ask, ‘How did this change your opinion of the maritime industry?’ a frequent answer is, ‘I didn’t know it existed, and now I know it’s an option,’” said Scherer. She stressed the importance of reaching students of color, particularly those from immigrant communities: “That’s part of what we’re focusing on in these high school programs, is getting them to understand that [maritime is] an option.”

While Scherer and Dickgieser are passionate about maritime as an option for young people, they were the first to admit that a career at sea isn’t for everyone. “The industry is not for the faint of heart,” Scherer explained, citing months spent away from friends and family, nonexistent cell service and hard work.

The women will also be the first to sing the praises of being a mariner, however. “The stuff you get to see—I mean, I’ve been all over the world,” said Scherer. “I’ve gotten to see things most people only get to dream about. Countless sunsets and sunrises, and the beauty of being humbled by realizing how small you are.”

Dickgieser added, “You learn a lot about yourself, and you create this comradery…the friendships and the weird little family you build while you’re away, you can’t really get that anywhere else.”

Even if young people aren’t interested in leaving dry land, there are still “lots of opportunities” in maritime, said Scherer. “You want to be an engineer, but you don’t want to go to sea? Go to Skagit Valley Community College and get a marine technician degree, which is working on engines and hydraulics and auxiliary systems on land.”

Maritime jobs are difficult, but if young people can handle the tradeoffs—months spent at sea working hard, but months spent on land enjoying their high salary—and if “they have a sense of adventure, there’s a great job waiting for them.”